Key Notes

Implementing a common code of good administrative behaviour

Background :

By the end of 1998 the European Ombudsman started an own initiative inquiry following numerous complaints by European citizens on the administrative duties of Community staff towards citizens. The Ombudsman concluded that each European institution or body has its own rules and practices to be taken into account by the respective staff when they were dealing with questions and complaints by European citizens.


I. What does the European Union do ?

Following the Treaty, the European Ombudsman is entitled to examine complaints by European citizens in possible cases of European maladministration and consequently to start an own initiative inquiry into the matter concerned.

As a result of such an inquiry, the Ombudsman may forward recommendations to the European Parliament with a call to tackle practices of maladministration by European institutions and bodies.

The European Parliament has welcomed very positively the Ombudsman's recommendation to draft a Code of Good Administrative Behaviour, common to all the European Union's institutions and bodies.

On the one hand such a Code would be useful for European officials when they deal with complaints, requests and questions from citizens, since they would know which common rules ought to be respected when dealing with citizens.

On the other hand, a Code, accessible to the public, would inform citizens on the standards on good administrative practices which they may expect from any European institution or bodies and their officials.


II.What has the EPP-ED Group achieved ?

The EPP-ED Coordinator in the Petitions Committee, Mr PERRY, has taken the lead in the debate on the following up of the Ombudsman's call for a common Code of Good Administrative Behaviour, when he was appointed rapporteur in July 2000.

The EPP-ED focused mainly on one essential point : the Code should be common and binding to all the institutions and bodies of the Union and their officials.

As proposed by the Ombudsman, the Code should be contained in a regulation on the basis of Article 308 of the Treaty and thus anchored into primary Community law.

The EPP-ED did not agree with the view of the Commission that the Code, as proposed by the Ombudsman, would merely imply some amendments of the existing Staff Regulation.


III. Our goals for the next legislative period

When Mr Perry's report on the Code was adopted by the Parliament in September 2001, the Ombudsman's recommendations proved to be quite successful, since many agencies and bodies have declared that they were willing to adopt a common Code of Good Administrative Behaviour.

Only the Commission remains reluctant and they maintain the view that the Commission, pointing at their own code of administrative practices, has sufficiently met the recommendations of the Ombudsman and the conclusions by the Parliament.

The EPP-ED will raise the matter again at the beginning of the next legislature taking into consideration that only a regulation on good administrative practices would be the just and logical consequence of Article 41 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the provisions on openness in the Amsterdam Treaty.


Advisor: Leo COX